Monday, January 28, 2013

Woodcutter's Song

I found this poem/song among the comments on storyteller Sheila Kay Adams' Facebook wall. The words are traditional and from the old country -- penned by the famous Mother Goose, they say. It seems a good way to warm the start of a January week. And good advice if you have a woodburning hearth or stove.

Monday, January 21, 2013

The first Inauguration I remember watching was in 1961. I remember watching, on our black and white TV, the old poet, Robert Frost, blinded by the sunlight, giving up reading his prepared poem and reciting instead this:

The Gift Outright

The land was ours before we were the land's.She was our land more than a hundred yearsBefore we were her people. She was oursIn Massachusetts, in Virginia,But we were England's, still colonials,Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,Possessed by what we now no more possessed.Something we were withholding made us weakUntil we found out that it was ourselvesWe were withholding from our land of living,And forthwith found salvation in surrender.Such as we were we gave ourselves outright(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)To the land vaguely realizing westward,But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,Such as she was, such as she would become.

- Robert Frost

Here is what he had intended to read:

Dedication

Summoning artists to participate

In the august occasions of the state

Seems something artists ought to celebrate.

Today is for my cause a day of days.

And his be poetry’s old-fashioned praise

Who was the first to think of such a thing.

This verse that in acknowledgement I bring

Goes back to the beginning of the end

Of what had been for centuries the trend;

A turning point in modern history.

Colonial had been the thing to be

As long as the great issue was to see

What country’d be the one to dominate

By character, by tongue, by native trait,

The new world Christopher Columbus found.

The French, the Spanish, and the Dutch were downed

And counted out. Heroic deeds were done.

Elizabeth the First and England won.

Now came on a new order of the ages

That in the Latin of our founding sages

(Is it not written on the dollar bill

We carry in our purse and pocket still?)

God nodded his approval of as good.

So much those heroes knew and understood,

I mean the great four, Washington,

John Adams, Jefferson, and Madison

So much they saw as consecrated seers

They must have seen ahead what not appears,

They would bring empires down about our ears

And by the example of our Declaration

Make everybody want to be a nation.

And this is no aristocratic joke

At the expense of negligible folk.

We see how seriously the races swarm

In their attempts at sovereignty and form.

They are our wards we think to some extent

For the time being and with their consent,

To teach them how Democracy is meant.

“New order of the ages” did they say?

If it looks none too orderly today,

‘Tis a confusion it was ours to start

So in it have to take courageous part.

No one of honest feeling would approve

A ruler who pretended not to love

A turbulence he had the better of.

Everyone knows the glory of the twain

Who gave America the aeroplane

To ride the whirlwind and the hurricane.

Some poor fool has been saying in his heart

Glory is out of date in life and art.

Our venture in revolution and outlawry

Has justified itself in freedom’s story

Right down to now in glory upon glory.

Come fresh from an election like the last,

The greatest vote a people ever cast,

So close yet sure to be abided by,

It is no miracle our mood is high.

Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs

Better than all the stalemate an’s and ifs.

There was the book of profile tales declaring

For the emboldened politicians daring

To break with followers when in the wrong,

A healthy independence of the throng,

A democratic form of right devine

To rule first answerable to high design.

There is a call to life a little sterner,

And braver for the earner, learner, yearner.

Less criticism of the field and court

And more preoccupation with the sport.

It makes the prophet in us all presage

The glory of a next Augustan age

Of a power leading from its strength and pride,

Of young amibition eager to be tried,

Firm in our free beliefs without dismay,

In any game the nations want to play.

A golden age of poetry and power

Of which this noonday’s the beginning hour.

-Robert Frost

And here is the poem for today - One Today - written and read by Richard Blanco for the Fifty-seventh Presidential Inauguration in American History. His language is efficient, evocative, electric. One today. One sun. One light. One ground. One wind. One sky. One moon. One Country.

One Today

One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,peeking over the Smokies, greeting the facesof the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truthacross the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a storytold by our silent gestures moving behind windows.My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbowsbegging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper—bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives—to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother didfor twenty years, so I could write this poem.All of us as vital as the one light we move through,the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explainthe empty desks of twenty children marked absenttoday, and forever. Many prayers, but one lightbreathing color into stained glass windows,life into the faces of bronze statues, warmthonto the steps of our museums and park benchesas mothers watch children slide into the day.One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalkof corn, every head of wheat sown by sweatand hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmillsin deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, handsdigging trenches, routing pipes and cables, handsas worn as my father’s cutting sugarcaneso my brother and I could have books and shoes.The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plainsmingled by one wind—our breath. Breathe. Hear itthrough the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,buses launching down avenues, the symphonyof footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,or whispers across café tables, Hear: the doors we openfor each other all day, saying: hello, shalom,buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos díasin the language my mother taught me—in every languagespoken into one wind carrying our liveswithout prejudice, as these words break from my lips.One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimedtheir majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado workedtheir way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more reportfor the boss on time, stitching another woundor uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,or the last floor on the Freedom Towerjutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyestired from work: some days guessing at the weatherof our lives, some days giving thanks for a lovethat loves you back, sometimes praising a motherwho knew how to give, or forgiving a fatherwho couldn’t give what you wanted.We head home: through the gloss of rain or weightof snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,always under one sky, our sky. And always one moonlike a silent drum tapping on every rooftopand every window, of one country—all of us—facing the starshope—a new constellationwaiting for us to map it,waiting for us to name it—together.

We have another opportunity to stand up for brotherhood today. It will be the first time I've missed it in about ten years. On this Monday in January I have made my way to Broad Street to join other Romans in declaring our dedication to the ideals proclaimed over 40 years ago by a young man named Martin King. There's little chance of shouted insults today. The bigots I watched here in 1965 won't show even their hooded faces today. Times have changed. But less blatant racism still persists, and it is still important to stand up and be counted occasionally. But this year I cannot bring myself to miss the inauguration. So -- if you aren't home watching the inauguration, join Alvin Jackson and the folks near the South Broad bridge at 11:30. And sing a little louder to make up for my absence. I'll do my best to be there again in 2014.

Sunday, January 20, 2013

This year my joy is just as great. Re-elected by over 4 million votes and a landslide of electoral votes the President has a mandate for his balanced approach to economic recovery and deficit reduction. He has proposed sensible and strong gun safety measures that will reduce gun violence while protecting Second Amendment rights. His immigration policies have been largely adopted by Marco Rubio and other Republicans. The Tea-Partiers have folded their efforts to hold our economy hostage with another debt-limit crisis. The health reforms of the first term are safe from repeal. The President and his proposals have the strong support of the American people according to the polls.

Tuesday, January 08, 2013

For a while I exercised my poetic skills frequently at the prompting of Trisha at The Miss Rumphius Effect. Most Mondays she issues a Poetry Stretch. The current Stretch challenge is to deal with home or habitat. So here is my self-conscious homecoming to the Stretch.